Prop*50

Election results: Votes on voting, redistricting, I&R process, campaign finance

Voters around the country faced a wide array of statewide ballot questions dealing with elections yesterday.  Among the more high-profile questions were the Illinois vote on creating a process to recall the governor, the Oklahoma proposal to require that voters show photo identification at the polls, and Vermont's plan to let certain 17 year-olds vote in primary elections.  With the passage of these three measures, Illinois becomes the 19th state with a recall process for the governor; Oklahoma becomes the 27th voter ID state, and among the 27, the ninth to require that the ID shows a photo of the voter; and Vermont becomes the 12th state to allow a 17 year-old to vote in the primary if s/he will turn 18 before the general election.

Voters in Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah approved guarantees that ballots are secret.  The questions in AZ and SC pertain only to labor union elections, but those in SD and UT apply both to state and union elections.

In Michigan and North Carolina, voters agreed that felons should not be eligible to hold public office.  Michigan's new constitutional provision prohibits anyone convicted of a felony related to a public office from running for office again for 20 years, while North Carolina's bans felons from serving as sheriff.

Redistricting:  In California, voters were decisive about who they wanted in charge of redistricting.  They approved Prop. 20, transferring responsibility for Congressional redistricting from the legislature to the independent commission approved by voters in 2008.  They also rejected Prop. 27, which would have dissolved that commission.  Florida voters were equally emphatic about reducing the legislature's role in redistricting:  Amendments 5 and 6 outline standards the legislature must follow in conducting legislative and congressional redistricting.  Both were approved with more than 62 percent of the vote.  In Oklahoma, voters agreed to change the name and composition of their state's apportionment commission.

Initiative Process:  In Arizona, a proposal to change the date by which initiative petitions must be filed with the state for signature verification is polling too close to call.  It's at 49.9% with 99% of ballots counted.  Prop. 112 would move the deadline from four to six months before the election, giving officials more time to validate signatures.  In Oklahoma, voters have approved a change in the basis for calculating signature requirements for initiatives.  It will have the effect of evening out signature requirements from year to year, removing the sharp rise in required signatures after a presidential election.

Campaign Finance:  Because Florida requires a 60% vote to approve a constitutional amendment, voters have rejected Amendment 1, which has a "yes" vote of 52.5%.  That proposal would have done away with the state's public campaign finance option available for statewide candidates.  Florida is one of 25 states with public financing for state candidates.

A Colorado mystery

Controversy over the financial backing of Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101 -- anti-tax initiatives that will appear on the November 2 ballot -- has been swirling for months in Colorado. State law requires that any person or group who raises or spends $200 or more on an initiative campaign must register with the secretary of state and file financial disclosure reports. No one registered as a proponent of these three initiatives, even though there is evidence that they qualified for the ballot through the use of professional, paid petition circulators. So who paid for the signature collection effort?

For months, opponents of the three measures pointed the finger at anti-tax activist and former Republican legislator Douglas Bruce. After it became known that the petition circulators had stayed in a property owned by Bruce, opponents filed a campaign finance complaint in January alleging that Bruce was the chief backer of the measures. He managed to evade process servers bearing a subpoena related to that case dozens of times. He was ultimately charged with contempt of court, but a judge dismissed that charge and ordered him to testify in the campaign finance case.  A judge in June found that there was sufficient evidence to tie Mr. Bruce to the three initiatives, and ordered the chief sponsor of each (Mr. Bruce's name does not appear in the list of sponsors on any of the three petitions) to pay a $6,000 fine for the campaign finance violations.

The latest twists in the story come from Mr. Bruce himself.  In contrast to his strident denials of his involvement in the three measures (he frequently characterizes such accusations as ....), an email he sent to supporters on September 23 claims, "You have no idea how much time and money has been spent to get to the finish line," and writes that he has spent over 1,600 hours of his time on the campaign.  He later said that number was a typo, and that he had actually spent only 160 hours.



Today's Denver Post reports that attorneys for the opponents -- a group called Coloradans for Responsible Reform -- have finally deposed Mr. Bruce, and he admitted to them that he had written more than $100,000 in checks to fund the signature drive from the account of his 501(c)(3), Active Citizens Together (ACT).  Under Colorado law, ACT should have registered with the secretary of state as soon as it reached the $200 spending threshold.  Furthermore, Mr. Bruce has admitted that he received the signed petitions, checked them for accuracy, and stored them at his home before turning them in to state officials for verification.  The current complaint goes to an administrative judge, who may order a hearing sometime in the next two weeks.

Mr. Bruce could find himself in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service as a result of this case as well.  IRS rules state that a 501(c)(3) cannot have as its chief purpose political activity, and it is unclear based on its recent activities that ACT can meet that standard.  Read more about how many non-profit groups are pushing the limits of rules regulating political spending this year in yesterday's New York Times.  Another potential legal problem looms in the fact that ACT has not registered as a non-profit with the Colorado secretary of state's office, a step that is required before a group can solicit charitable contributions.

Several of the 24 initiative states have acted in recent years to tighten campaign finance disclosure rules for initiative campaigns, particularly for spending during the signature-gathering phase.  The idea behind such disclosure is that the identity of the individuals, groups or corporations that seek to put an initiative before voters is a key fact that voters should be aware of as they decide how to vote on a proposal.  Because the opponents have had to rely on the courts to force disclosure in the case of Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101, it is possible that Colorado voters will not know the facts surrounding the financial sponsorship of these three highly controversial initiatives before Election Day.

Washington's campaign finance limits stand, for now

Two courts weighed in on Washington's campaign finance rules for initiative campaigns last week.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on October 12 upheld a lower court ruling that validated the state's disclosure rules for campaign spending.  A group called Human Life filed the suit, alleging that the state's requirements that the group register as a political action committee and report its fundraising and spending on issue ads opposing a 2008 assisted suicide initiative were unconstitutional.  A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit disagreed, writing that, “Access to reliable information becomes even more important as more speakers, more speech and thus more spending enter the marketplace, which is precisely what has occurred in recent years...Like campaigns for elected office, ballot initiatives are the subject of intense debate and, accordingly, greater expenditures to ensure that messages reach voters.”

On the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on a different campaign finance case from Washington.  Washington campaign finance law has a unique feature:  during the last 21 days before an election (that clock started ticking on Oct. 12 for the Nov. 2 election), no single source can donate more than $5,000 in the aggregate to any political committee.  This limit came under challenge by a group called Family PAC in 2009.  They were organized to oppose Referendum Measure 71 in 2009, which proposed to expand the rights of same-sex domestic partners.  A judge in 2009 refused to lift the ban in 2009 because the challenge came so late in the election that lifting the ban would be disruptive.  After the election, the judge struck down the $5,000 limit.  The state of Washington appealed to the 9th Circuit for a stay, and the court obliged.  Tuesday's SCOTUS ruling upholds the 9th Circuit's stay.  Look for a more protracted battle on this case after the election.

As always SCOTUSblog provides an excellent explanation as well as links to briefs.